Quincy nursing home last inspected by city in 2007

Monday

Mar 3, 2014 at 2:40 AMMar 3, 2014 at 2:44 AM

The city's building department hasn't inspected the Kindred Transitional Care and Rehabilitation nursing home on McGrath Highway in more than six years. Quincy's three other nursing homes were all inspected last summer.

Patrick Ronan The Patriot Ledger @pronan_Ledger

QUINCY – The city’s building department hasn’t inspected the Kindred Transitional Care and Rehabilitation nursing home on McGrath Highway in more than six years. Quincy’s three other nursing homes were all inspected last summer.

The disparity between inspection times was recently discovered when the husband of a former worker complained to the city that the Kindred facility had a faulty fire-alarm system and other building deficiencies. The home, with 139 beds and 50 employees, was last inspected by the city’s building department on June 15, 2007.

“We’re going to take the complaint seriously and we’ll do our inspection and make a determination of whether the building is maintained in a safe condition,” said Jay Duca, the city’s director of inspectional services.

When the Kindred home, at 11 McGrath Highway, was inspected by the state Department of Public Health in January 2013, it met 127 of 132 requirements. The average nursing home in the state meets 125 of 132 requirements.

The state, which licenses nursing homes annually, conducts unannounced health and fire-safety inspections because the facilities rely on public Medicare and Medicaid funds. The state renewed the Quincy Kindred’s license last March.

Kindred’s inspection certificate with the city expired in June 2009, when the city performed inspections every two years. Today, city buildings with high occupancies, like schools, restaurants, daycare centers and nursing homes, need to be inspected every year.

Kindred Healthcare operates hundreds of nursing homes, assisted-living centers and transitional-care programs throughout the country. In a statement faxed to The Patriot Ledger on Friday, the nursing home said it cooperates fully with the city and was unaware until recently that the building was overdue for inspection.

“However, once we learned that we were overdue for an inspection, we contacted the city as soon as possible and have scheduled an inspection with the City of Quincy Inspectional Services Department,” the statement said.

Duca said city inspectors determine whether facilities are being properly maintained and whether the owner is performing fire-alarm and sprinkler tests through an independent contractor.

Kindred’s expired certificate went unnoticed for so long because the city’s building department is still transitioning to a digital record-keeping system that alerts officials when certificates have expired, Duca said.

“This nursing home was not in the (electronic) database,” he said.

The owner of the building at 11 McGrath Highway, Ventas Finance, requested a city inspection on Jan. 27 of this year. A city inspector is scheduled to inspect the facility Wednesday.

Duca said building owners are responsible for making sure their inspections are up to date. However, he said Kindred will not be fined or penalized.

Anne Roach, a spokeswoman for the state Department of Public Health, said a nursing home’s license is based mostly on state inspections, which occur once every nine to 15 months. The state inspected Quincy’s Kindred home in December 2010, November 2011 and January 2013.

“Local building code requirements do not impact the DPH license, though failure of a facility to comply with local requirements would be a deficient practice and could lead to loss of licensure and certification if corrections were not made as might be ordered by the town,” Roach said in an email.

Quincy Fire Chief Joseph Barron said his department conducts quarterly fire-safety inspections at city nursing homes. Barron said he is not aware of any problems at Kindred.

“If there was an issue, I would expect to have heard about it,” he said.

Quincy’s other nursing homes are the Marina Bay Skilled Nursing Center, the Hancock Park Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in downtown Quincy and the John Adams HealthCare Center in South Quincy. The city’s building department inspected these facilities between June and August of last year.